Sir Samuel Alexander Mendes CBE (born 1 August 1965) is an English film and stage director, producer and screenwriter. In theatre, he is known for his dark re-inventions of the stage musicals Cabaret (1994), Oliver! (1994), Company (1995), and Gypsy (2003). He directed an original West End stage musical for the first time with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2013).
For directing the play The Ferryman, Mendes was awarded the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play in 2019.
Avatar: The Way of Water‘s mega-publicized opening has brought movies back into the conversation, but movie-makers seem to have been lost in the mist.
James Cameron’s persona is ablaze across the media but, by contrast, the very personal work of Sam Mendes, James Gray and even Steven Spielberg has done a fade-out in recent weeks. “Cinema is a language that’s about to get lost,” Wim Wenders once predicted at a Cannes Film Festival, but filmmakers keep trying.
Witness the likes of Empire of Light (Mendes), Armageddon Time (Gray) or even The Fabelmans (Spielberg), all exploring the efforts of young filmmakers trying to discover that language.
None so far has discovered an audience. Then there is Damien Chazelle, who calls Babylon, his new film, both a “hate letter or a love letter to movies.” Having both won and lost an Oscar with La La Land, Chazelle has a claim on mixed messages, and critics, too, seem to be taking two sides.
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